News Items

Juliette Bruce has won a Campus-Wide Teaching Assistant Award for Exceptional Service. She is a fourth-year PhD student in Mathematics and has taught classes in algebra, statistics and probability, and calculus. Additionally, she has held a non-standard teaching assistant position with the Madison Math Circle, an outreach program sponsored by the math department, since spring 2016.

“One aspect of teaching for the Madison Math Circle that I really enjoy is taking the University of Wisconsin–Madison beyond the bounds of campus, making our learning community open and inclusive to as many people as possible,” Juliette said.

Professor Emeritus Ed Fadell passed away on Jan. 11 at age 91 (almost 92). After graduating from OSU with a PhD degree, he went to Harvard as an assistant professor for three years before coming to Madison in 1955. He stayed at Madison both a distiguished researcher in Algebraic Topology and award winning teacher until his retirement in 1994. He stayed and taught another 5 year before fully retired. He also loved music. Link: http://go.wisc.edu/nb19yr

Sufian Husseini passed away late December 30, 2017 in Salem, Oregon, after months of health struggles. He was a faculty member from 1961 until his retirement in 2001.

Sufian obtained his PhD at Princeton under Norman Steenrod and was an instructor at MIT before moving to Madison. His research was primarily in algebraic topology, on topics such as loop spaces and configuration spaces. He established a long term collaboration with Ed Fadell (also a UW-Madison colleague) and together they wrote a number of beautiful and influential papers exploring applications of algebraic topology to diverse topics in analysis, manifold theory, economics and mathematical physics. Their joint monograph Geometry and Topology of Configuration Spaces published in 2001 by Springer is a highly regarded reference.

Sufian was a source of knowledge and inspiration for students and faculty alike and known for his astute insight in mathematics and beyond. Together with his wife Barbara he generously hosted many mathematicians and contributed in important ways to our department for forty years.

Andreas Seeger has been awarded aHumboldt Research Award by the Humboldt Foundation. The award is granted in recognition of a researcher's entire achievements to date to academics whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future. Congratulations, Andreas!

The American Mathematical Society has announced that Timo Seppalainen was named as a Fellow in the 2018. The Fellows of the American Mathematical Society program recognizes members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication, and utilization of mathematics. Timo was nominated for his contributions to probability. Well deserved!